Belief + Doubt = Sanity, And Various Other Truths And Wonders

The NY Times has written about a new art project going around the country on trucks with slogans like ‘Belief + Doubt = Sanity’ and ‘Look for the Moment when Pride becomes Contempt’ and others. Sounds wonderful:

Trucks transport 70 percent of the freight in the United States, according to the Department of Transportation. And if a prominent New York artist and his friends have their way, a tiny fraction of that total — six 18-wheelers full, to be exact — will soon be a variety of cargo not usually found barreling down the interstate: art, fresh from painters’ studios; poets’, playwrights’ and songwriters’ pens; and filmmakers’ cameras.

After years of rumors about a Great American Art Trip in the works, the painter Eric Fischl has announced a privately financed program in which a truck-based roving museum and performance space will tour the country for two years to address what he sees as an identity crisis in American culture.

This is the America Now and Here website; the artists are well known — visual artists like Jeff Koons, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cindy Sherman…playwrights like Edward Albee…poets…filmmakers…and musicians like Sting, Paul Simon, Lou Reed, Steve Martin, Rosanne Cash…

—

(this is a pic we took of the women’s section the last time we were in Israel)Passover is next week, and that means that all the little prayer notes everyone puts in the Wall are cleared out of the crevices to make room etc. If you ever want to put a note/prayer in the Wall, you can go to this part of the Aish website, and one of their students will actually go out and put it in the Wall.

And that leads to the funniest thing put out for this Passover yet:

—Paveen Chunhaswasdikul (“Beer”), who lives in Gadsden and is known for his masculine pottery:

(this is his V-6 Teapot that I took a pic of at Bluff Park’s Art Festival a year or two ago)…will be showing as one of the 120 artists at the prestigious Smithsonian Craft Show this weekend in Washington. Wow!

There are more pics of Beer’s pottery here (he doesn’t have a website).

The Smithsonian is also doing an online auction of some of the artists’ work, going on right now.

—Restaurant R’evolution is supposed to open late spring this year in the Royal Sonesta in New Orleans (a nice hotel, we’ve stayed there). The interesting part about that is that John Folse is doing this with the idea of showing how people ate in New Orleans in the 1800s. That will be manifested in seven different dining rooms to represent seven cuisines that influenced the taste culture back then. There will be a market with meats, cheeses, etc. also. The bar will specialize in pre-Prohibition cocktails.

—From March 28 – 31, John Folse worked to do a food truck to promote the new season of Swamp People on the History Channel, in NYC. The truck was called “Taste of the Bayou” and they handed out over 13,000 free servings around Grand Central Station, Bryant Park, Penn Station, the Financial District, the Port Authority, Union Square and Chelsea.

But seriously, Zagat, when you tell readers about Louisiana food (mallard duck and smoked wild boar sausage gumbo, venison jambalaya, and fricassee of swamp rabbit and wild mushrooms — yum)coming to do NYC, do you really have to mention Deliverance and advise people they don’t have to worry about banjo music?

Also last month, there was a food truck in NYC to promote HBO’s Treme, where they handed out free Hubig’s pies (yes!), pralines (yes, yes!), and king cake (wha? it’s not Mardi Gras season any more, y’all…).

—Thanks to my friend Bethanne Hill, a wonderful person and incredible artist (who did this piece for Alabama Folklife about a Sacred Harp Singing School) who talked about the kinetic wind-operated art of Theo Jansen:Incredible.